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Two 
Chicago Sketches 



T ▼ 



JVhen the City IVakes to Life 



Lake Michigan in Calm and Storm 



John R. Rathom 




Copyright, 1910, by John R. Rathom 



CGIA278886 



^ 



To F. M. C. R. 



IN EXPLANATION 

rHE two sketches contained in this little vol- 
ume are written in personal recognition of 
some betterment of mind and aspiration drawn by 
one individual from the lesson taught through a 
happy period of years in Chicago. When time 
permits, it is my intention to present at much 
greater length a further picture of the citys life. 

In the Chicago of today there are over two 
millions of men, women and children, gathered 
from every part of the globe, engaged in every 
channel of activity known to mankind, living in 
palaces and hovels, building great office struc- 
tures, pounding at the door of fortune, inces- 
santly spreading the limits of their city out through 
an ever-iticreasing radius and making it one of 
the greatest centers of human unrest that the world 
has ever known. 

Nothing that anybody may write about 
Chicago can add to her fame, for wherever civil- 
ization has penetrated it is known. Her mam- 
moth flights of business, the loyalty of her citizens, 
her material growth and her capture of one after 
the other of the great markets of the world, are 
things as familiar in London, or Paris, or Berlin, 
as they are on La Salle street. Along material 
lines continued and ever-increasing adva>ice is 
assured. 

We cannot walk through the streets ivithout 
treading, at every point, on ground made precious 
by the spilling of blood when the little village was 
an outpost of civilization, or by the humble begin- 
ning of some great enterprise, or by the fire-swept 
spots that almost at the same moment heralded a 
citys destruction and a city's regeneration, or by 
the tramp of the feet of marching troops answering 
the call of their country in its time of peril. 



IN EXPLANATION 



There is not an acre of its broad area "on 
which men have not struggled, and conquered 
fate and set their faces on the forward path; there 
is not a landmark in it that is not consecrated to 
the remembrance of those who knew how to endure 
and bear a bright and smiling front in the face of 
the blackest despair that ever clouded a city's life. 

Into its hospitable' arms have poured, and 
are pouring, and will pour till the world gets better, 
the outcasts of every land, the down-trodden 
human beings who seek liberty and the right to 
live, the fugitives from- despotism who speak forty 
different tongues, but have one common cause. 

By the waters of Lake Michigan have been 
wrought some of the wonders of the world. Other 
centers, marveling at Chicago's growth, called her 
an overgrown village, and she planted her feet on 
the ladder and became a city. Then they said she 
had reached her limit of achievement, and she 
answered by snaking the greatest strides in popula- 
tion and the acquisition of wealth that had ever 
been recorded in modern history. Then they de- 
clared that she was the head and center and cul- 
mination of coarse materialism without an atom 
of high aspiration, and her reply in the building 
of the wonderful White City startled and thrilled 
the people of every nation and silenced her 
detractors. 

And Chicago, in her own way, steadily and 
bravely mounts an eminence and shows signs, in 
a hundred different paths, that her people have not 
lost sight of these higher aims and that they are 
determined to make their beloved city as graceful 
as she is powerful, as noble as she is big, and to 
put her on a lofty plane of civic honor and civic 
beauty. 



IN EXPLANATION 



The inspiration she has for these ideals in 
her great heritage will become a powerful factor in 
the work. The men who built the first log cabin 
and who died by the tomahawk of the treacherous 
Indian, the women who cared for their babies in 
pioneer days and cheerfully suffered unnumbered 
privations, the citizens who found all their ac- 
cumulations of toiling years swept away in a 
night, are not forgotten. 

There is another asset too that brings the 
brightest hopes for these higher achievements. It 
is the devoted loyalty of Chicago's citizens to her 
cause and future. At first glance it seems incom- 
patible to think of "loyalty in connection with her 
towering buildings, her thundering elevated roads, 
her smashing, crashing, never-stilled whirlpool of 
traffic, her miles of cobblestone throughfares, her 
smoking chimneys and her feverish activity. But 
nevertheless there is a something in her indom- 
itable spirit, in her bigness — -an indefinable, in- 
tangible magnet that first binds us to her fortunes 
and afterward holds us tight to her destiny and 
makes us jealous guardians of her further reputa- 
tion. 

And in spite of mistakes, in spite of imper- 
fections inseparable from rapid growth, we all 
know, and feel a glow of pride in the knowledge, 
that the city has her face set steadfastly in the 
right direction and that she is building her own 
destiny, as she builds everything to which she puts 
her hand, enduringly and well. 



John R. Rathom 



Phovidence, Rhode Island 

December 25th, 1910. 




When the City Wakes to Life 




iNE night in Chicago, not many years 
ago, — an especially strenuous night for 
newspaper men, — five or six of us fore- 
gathered after work was over in a 
place now swept away by the march of 
progress, but once dear to the hearts of many who still 
hold memories of Spanish beans and stewed ducks, and 
a veteran cook. 

When the eating and drinking were over and the 
triumphs and defeats of the night fully discussed, we 
found ourselves stamping our feet on the sidewalk in 
the pure, bracing air of 4 o'clock on a frosty Novem- 
ber morning. 

"Well, let's go home," said one of the members of 
the party, with a yawn. 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

"No," responded another. "I've got a new idea. 
Let's cut out bed tonight and see this old town wake 
up." 

So while thousands of alarm clocks were bidding 
labor to its tasks all over Chicago and the first faint 
streaks of dawn became visible in the eastern sky, the 
little band of explorers began to grope into the morning. 



We find the quiet broken at once by the rush and 
rattle of milk wagons. Out of the gloom with a flam- 
ing lantern bobbing up and down like a will-o'-the- 
wisp comes one of them now, waking the echoes, and 
on the uneven cobblestones making nearly as much 
noise as a fire-engine. Another bang and crash and 
he is away in the blackness on the other side of us, 
soon to be racing wildly up back stairs in the residence 
districts, leaving behind him the contribution of the 
cows to the morning breakfast. 

He is not any too early. Already the little alarm 
clocks have clanged their warning signal in the ears of 
hundreds of thousands of sleepers, and men and women 
are groping out of bed to light the gas and the cook- 
stove fires and get ready for the work of the day. 

Still the darkness. The few streaks of gray dawn 
have not increased perceptibly, and unless we happen 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

to be near a fizzing electric light we can only dimly 
see the figures that come along the streets hurrying off 
to bed after a night of labor. Printers, many of these, 
and then there are telegraph operators and police offi- 
cers just off duty. Here we come across a dozen 
laborers walking in a group, the smell of newly-turned 
clay all about them, and damp pickaxes and shovels 
over their shoulders. They have been doing emergency 
work all night on a leaking gas main and are now 
trudging homeward. Once in a while we see a straggler 
wander uncertainly out of the swinging doors of a 
saloon and gaze about him in a mystified way, as if he 
had expected to find himself in the middle of the after- 
noon. 

A solitary pigeon strutting fearlessly in front of us 
starts from our feet with a whirr like a quail in the grass 
and circles overhead with a mild coo of protest at being 
disturbed in his early morning walk. Here we are now 
at the comer of Washington and La Salle streets, and 
here are more pigeons, in sole possession of the neighbor- 
hood. They wheel about in graceful circles, and flutter 
among the tall buildings as if, instead of being great 
structures of brick and stone, they were the forest 
trees that stood in the same spot fifty years ago. 

Suddenly comes another noise that drowns out 
the murmur of the birds. It begins with a groan and 
a squeak, and soon breaks into a screech of metallic 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

friction and defies and overcomes the stillness of the 
morning. The noise grows, coming from below our 
feet as if the old earth were stretching and yawning in 
a final tired motion before it decided to wake. It is the 
cable beginning to move, and then we know that the 
day is stirring to life in earnest. 

In swift verification, a rosy searchlight pointed up 
into the heavens flashes into view right across the lake, 
rising out of Michigan and saying good morning to 
Illinois. Another and still another spring into being 
beside it. "Wake up, Chicago," "Wake up, 
Chicago!" "Wake up, Chicago" — that's what they 
proclaim, and in seeming answer the cable begins to 
rattle more fiercely still, with that peculiar sing-song 
lilt that shows it is not as yet burdened with labor, and 
is enjoying its few minutes of freedom before it begins 
to drag its overloaded cars downtown. 

Well, we must be moving on. The neighborhood 
we are in now is not the habitat of early risers, and we 
would have to stay two, maybe three hours to get any 
sight of the things we have come out to see. So off 
over to the Desplaines street viaduct, that great murky, 
forbidding area of drab timbers that joins the down- 
town district to one of the most thickly populated 
parts of the city. On our way we note the gradual 
brightening in the sky, and as we pass the Haymarket 
we do not need the electric lights to see the long rows 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

of wagons drawn up side by side, piled high with green 
stuff, and sending out a scent that takes us back out on 
the prairie, and among the loam of the market gardens. 
A dozen sleepy wagoners are moving the canvas cover- 
ing from their produce and putting out the lanterns by 
the light of which they have just rumbled into the city 
along the country roads. Three more blocks, and we 
are at the viaduct, its overhanging cobweb of rusty 
iron bars showing plainly in the pink and blue of the 
fast coming day. 

A sturdy fellow, with his coat collar turned up, 
hands thrust deep in his trovisers pockets and a corncob 
pipe in his mouth, trudges out from Milwaukee avenue 
and turns onto the viaduct, nodding us a cheery good 
morning as he passes. Half a block behind him come 
two others of the same type. Up the great artery of 
the Northwest Side, little black specks appear, stepping 
out of the side streets. The light in the east grows 
brighter and brighter, until we are able to see that 
factory chimneys all about us are giving signs of life 
below. The soft hiss of steam from exhaust pipes tells 
us that we have been too late to catch some of the 
workers, who are already at their posts making ready 
for the day's production of power. 

A belated freight train sweeps down over the 
tracks from the north, the sides and tops of the 
cars all covered with thin white frost. The street 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

lamps along Milwaukee avenue are gradually being 
obliterated by the growing light, and give out only a 
sickly glitter. The little specks on both sidewalks in- 
crease every moment, and all are setting their faces 
toward where we are standing. 

The daily parade of toil has begun, and here we 
are about to see a sight such as no other street in the 
United States can show — a sight that has long since 
given to this thoroughfare the immortal name of 
Dinner Pail avenue. 

Swing, swing, swing; tramp, tramp, tramp; here 
they come. And to welcome them the morning sun 
peeps up over the waste of downtown buildings and 
shines full in their faces. With a rhythmic sweep of 
power and dignity and all-pervading strength they 
race down, a great river of labor, onto the viaduct that 
shakes and quivers beneath their feet. 

Mingled with the tramp comes the hum of voices, 
broken not infrequently by a burst of hearty laughter. 
All are comrades. The fact that they are trudging the 
same way at this time in the morning is introduction 
enough, and, as they pass one another or catch up and 
go along together, they exchange salutations and drift 
naturally enough into friendly talk. Nothing strikes 
one so much in looking at them as the absence of the 
sad, gloomy heaviness always met with among the 
crowds of toilers in European cities, and even among 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

the foreign elements on the southern boundaries of our 
own city. 

There is nothing sullen about this great human 
stream. It seems to exude good fellowship, hope and 
the joy of living; intelligence shines out from every 
face. True, here and there are features that conjure 
up the story of the bitter struggle to keep the home 
supplied, of the long hours of dull plodding to come, of 
the black outlook ahead. But such faces are the ex- 
ception, not the rule, and though in this swinging army 
of men and women many hearts may be heavy with 
fear for the morrow, there is everywhere, on the faces, 
hope for the outcome of to-day. 

The Dinner Pail avenue army is only one of a 
hundred battalions marching on the dow^ntown section 
of Chicago at this moment from every part of the city. 
They pour out of modest homes, from brick and wood 
cottages, from back alleys and side streets, from modest 
workingmen's flats, to swell the invasion. Before their 
day's work is over, every center of population, and 
every country in the world will draw on their labor and 
be the richer for the thousand things they turn out 
with their skilled hands. Here, in the middle of a 
group of sturdy laborers, is a trimly dressed young 
woman, who, on account of press of business, is going 
downtown early to take dictation and write business 
letters for her employers. Even with her evident 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

refinement she seems rather proud of her company, and 
does not hesitate to answer with a cheery voice the 
respectful good mornings that come from all sides. 
Before night she will have written to great mercantile 
houses in Berlin, in London, in Paris, in Melbourne, in 
lands she only knows in books, for the energy created 
in Chicago scatters in world-wide circles, and reaches 
wherever enterprise can force its way. 

Nearly every unit in this Milwaukee avenue host 
carries its means of sustenance with it, and as we watch 
we see that the variety of the dinner pails alone is 
astonishing. Many have their noonday meals under 
their arms wrapped in newspapers; others carry the 
familiar common round bucket; thousands have the 
oblong metal contrivance with a cup in the top, and 
then there are leather and japanned tin boxes, old 
canvas satchels and black waterproof bags. 

There is something very hearty and wholesome 
about the sight of a well-filled pipe in the early morning, 
and eighty per cent, of the men in this great army have 
either corncobs or some more expensive variety in their 
mouths. You may look for a long while before you see 
a cigar; Chicago has not yet become a stogie town. 
Newspapers too are few and far between. Be not 
deceived in the condition of these people by their 
clothing. Labor is not particular as to its dress, but 
very few in all the vast surging crowd of men and 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

women going townwards are without neat and suitable 
apparel for rest days and holidays. 

Old coats once black, but now mottled green, 
shabby jackets worn out of all semblance to any par- 
ticular color or shade, and head coverings of every de- 
scription, all touched with age, are not the real index to 
the lives of these workers. To read that aright we 
must look into their faces, and there we see another 
and a brighter story. There are some employers of 
labor in Chicago who are called hard taskmasters, and 
others who treat their hands with scant consideration 
when good wages are demanded, but the faces here 
have not the look that slaves wear. Once having seen 
a procession of this character, very few to whom the 
sight is an unusual one would hesitate to say that if 
the appearance of these men and women told anything, 
it spoke of two overwhelming conditions — independ- 
ence and intelligence. 

Laborers, using the term in its ordinary accepta- 
tion, are so far greatly in the majority. A big pro- 
portion of the 100,000 metal-workers of the city are 
among them and mingled in with them, as may plainly 
be seen from the appearance of their clothing, are 
bricklayers, hod carriers and masons. 

And now a warmer tinge comes into the air as the 
sun begins to conquer the frost, and as the minutes fly 
a change comes over the aspect of the steadily marching 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

army. Its size does not diminish, but better cloth- 
ing is making its appearance here and there, fur boas 
can be seen about the necks of the young women, trim 
walking jackets come in sight, topped by hats that are 
pretty, even stylish in character. The men are not 
smoking pipes now, but cigars; dinner pails are dis- 
appearing, and tucked under every second arm is a 
morning newspaper. 

We will leave the ever hurrying army here and 
get across to the heart of the downtown streets where 
we can watch the swarming thousands pour into this 
confined area and marvel at the enormous needs of the 
city that can find room and opportunity for the com- 
bined labor of such masses of human beings. Down 
out of the elevated stairways and from the cars where 
men and women hold on to every available strap and 
overflow from the back and front, they pour, and tens 
of thousands flood down by every thoroughfare, from 
the North, South and West Sides, till it seems as if no 
office structure ever built could hold them all. 



The newsboys come out and begin to cry their 
papers at every block. Stores open up and men 
struggle with display stands on the sidewalks, while 
from offices window washers and scrub-women, their 
work over, hurry out into the street. The sun's rays 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

are flooding every thoroughfare ; squads of poHce march 
out to take up their posts on the downtown corners; 
the pigeons, scared away from their lower haunts of 
the night and dawn, are circHng higher and higher yet 
and find shelter under the eaves of the buildings; long 
processions of wagons rattle over the streets ; breakfast 
restaurants are filling up ; into every State street depart- 
ment store pass great throngs of young women and 
girls. The city is waking up with a vengeance. 

From the West Side, in the heart of the great fac- 
tory district, comes the whirr of wheels. Away out 
South is the black pall of smoke that proclaims life and 
activity at the great steel works, and the stockyards, — 
a city in itself, — is crowded in every corner with busy 
workers. Out along North avenue the gas lights still 
glimmer, though the bright sun is streaming every- 
where and rapidly licking up the frost on the wooden 
sidewalks. The tin dinner buckets have disappeared 
from the elevated trains and surface cars. The hands 
that hold the straps have changed from the bare and 
grimy to the well-gloved, and there are rows of well- 
polished shoes and clean-shaven faces and umbrellas 
with fancy mountings, where half an hour before sat 
laborers with the evidence of their craft thick about 
them. 

In the same seats where their own firemen and 
engineers may have rested a little while earlier, 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

employers are now reading their morning papers and 
being whirled along dounn to offices made warm and com- 
fortable for their coming. Bankers, merchants, arch- 
itects and lawyers are mingled thickly in the crowds. 
Men worth millions and small shopkeepers, alike with 
laborers and artisans make use of the five cent trans- 
portation to convey them to their business ; not three 
per cent, of all the moneyed men of the city reach 
their offices in automobiles. 

The arc lights are spluttering in the customers' 
rooms of the Board of Trade, and sleepy-eyed boys are 
already mounting ladders to begin the stock record of 
the day on blackboards new cleaned of chalk. Here 
and there a victim of the craze is already seated in a 
chair, though there will be nothing on the boards to 
interest him fon two full hours. Messenger boys race 
through the corridors and across to the Rialto in ever 
increasing numbers, and the din and hum of these two 
buildings that later on in the day will develop into an 
unceasing roar of voices and hurrying feet, has already 
begun. 

Stepping from the door of the Board of Trade 
Building, we come face to face with the whole length 
of La Salle street. Like Dinner Pail avenue, it, too, 
is full of hurrying feet, all of them making in our direc- 
tion, but there the comparison ends. Young men, 
sporting rather gaudy silk mufflers and the very latest 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

brim in derby hats, skim — ^there is no better word for 
it — past the masses of older and more deliberate people, 
who cover the ground with their heads buried in over- 
coat collars and cigars held tight under close-cropped 
mustaches. On either side of the street the great banks 
show signs of life. Already thousands of clerks are sit- 
ting at ponderous ledgers, but as yet there is no rush 
of business on the marble floors outside the counters, 
where women with mops and pails of hot water are still 
at work cleaning up the dirt of yesterday. 

Very soon, almost before another hour has gone, 
transactions involving millions of dollars will be car- 
ried on within these walls, tickers will be sounding 
away merrily as if with each merry movement they 
brought happiness instead of despair to most of the 
men that watch their story. Brokers, bankers, clerks, 
stenographers, keep pouring down into what Chicago 
calls, with unintentional sarcasm, the "heart" of its 
moneyed district. Soon the daily six hours of hope, 
disappointment, success, failure, wealth, ruin and shat- 
tering of nerves will begin. 

This is the hour when every terminus of suburban 
railroads is a great, seething human hive, with great 
masses of people pouring in from out-of-town homes to 
take their places in the daily struggle. The trains 
bring them from all the wide north and northwest 
territory and the entire north shore; from Rogers 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

Park, Evanston, Winnetka, Wilmette, Lake Forest, 
Highland Park, Wheaton, Oak Park, Austin and a hun- 
dred other points. The cars deliver great crowds at 
their various depots every few minutes, and on every 
weekday of the year ninety per cent, of the commuters 
travel the same path to their offices, hardly ever vary- 
ing a yard in space or a minute in time. As they race 
along you see instinctively that almost every step 
brings them to a familiar piece of sidewalk; they have 
the depot stairs calculated to a nicety, and know within 
one circle of the minute hand on their watches how long 
it will take them to get to their desks and sit down 
ready for their day's labor. 

And still the wonder grows where, even in a city 
with office structures like this, there is room for all 
these atoms of humanity that seem to increase rather 
than dwindle away as the clock points to 8:30. Look- 
ing down on the heads of the wobbling uneven lines 
converging toward us, we begin to see here and there 
a tail muff and a black ostrich plume — the advance 
guard of the upper ten is getting its eyes open. 

Elevated trains continue to crash round the down- 
town loop in' rapid succession. One of them, blocked 
for the opening of a bridge and nearly five minutes 
behind its schedule time, holds a frantic lot of citizens, 
who consult their watches every second, look at each 
other in consternation and generally act as if the loss 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

of a few moments might do harm enough to throw the 
whole business world into a panic. There are no phi- 
losophers among railroad passengers of this kind when 
it comes to seeing the minutes slip away in unfortunate 
delays. 

Overrun by the invading army of workers, the 
city still raises its head in the fast strengthening sun- 
light and makes ample room for all who come. Bat- 
tering rams in the shape of surface cars from Milwaukee 
and Indiana avenues and West Madison, Halsted and 
Clark streets are hurled against it and it sends them 
back on their outward journey emptied of their closely 
packed crowds without feeling the added attack. 
Men may go to the wall ruined, with the savings of 
years swept away, but the stones that they themselves 
have raised still stand, offering an equal chance to all 
for either fortune or failure. 



And now South Water street is filled to overflow- 
ing with teams whose drivers shout and curse lustily 
in their efforts to reach their destination ; the stores are 
filling up with customers and cash boys begin to run 
between the aisles, and the cashiers at the pneumatic 
tubes downstairs know by the increasing drop, drop, of 
the leather boxes that buyers are coming in rapidly; 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

freight warehouses of railroads throw back their rolling 
doors, and great teams, with creaking and straining, 
haul away their loads to business houses waiting for 
their new goods ; the florists run their displays onto the 
sidewalks and cry their wares lustily; the wholesale 
district about the main channel of the Chicago River 
is filling up and every thoroughfare is choked with 
horses and wagons; lawyers are looking over their al- 
manacs and preparing for appointments and court 
trials ; bootblack stands are overcrowded ; the thou- 
sands we saw pass by us on Milwaukee avenue a few 
hours ago are already beginning to dream of lunch ; the 
sun rises higher and drives the pigeons entirely out of 
sight in their effort to get away from its glare; the 
mists on the lake fly away by magic ; at all the railroad 
depots the little locomotives that draw^ the suburban 
trains are pushed ignominiously to one side while their 
elder brethren of the limited trains for far-away points 
make ready with a great puffing and fuming, as befits 
their state, for passengers and mail ; out in all the great 
residence districts, children are already off for school 
and mothers are figuring on the dinner that must be on 
the table for their return; courts are opening and 
prisoners are making ready to face their fate; here and 
there in churches a sexton bustles about in preparation 
for a morning wedding; along a boulevard moves an 
early funeral for one w^ho is beyond all the noise and 
the hope and the striving. 



WHEN THE CITY WAKES TO LIFE 

In the midst of life we are in death; but what a 
Hfe! What a throbbing, all-pervading life it is, and 
who beyond the few immediate loved ones that have a 
sense of personal loss have time to give more than a 
passing thought to the falling back of one little unit in 
the struggle. Two millions of people full of energy and 
vitality have come into the battle ground of another 
day! 

The city is awake. Awake to the desire for gain, 
the hunt for preferment, the struggle for bread, the 
craving for all the things that mean material prosperity. 

Awake, too, let us hope and believe to the demands 
of conscience, to the power of a kind word, to the four- 
fold interest in peace of mind that comes from every 
merciful and sympathetic act; awake to the brother- 
hood of man, and the responsibilities of citizenship. 




Lake Michigan in Calm and Storm 




Lake Michigan in Calm and Storm 




HICAGO people take Lake Michigan 
very much as they do their air and 
their cobble stones. Everybody knows 
it lies out there along the eastern fringe 
of the city; those who use the along 
shore suburban railway service are mildly interested 
at the glimpses they get of it now and then from the 
train windows; once or twice during the summer a 
number of them venture on its bosom in trips across 
to Michigan, admire its beauty and promptly forget 
its existence till next year. Many, many thousands of 
others have never even seen it at all. 

Chicago ought to be better acquainted with Lake 
Michigan, to know more about its moods, its thousand 
and one changes, its delights, its perils, its calm and 
storm, and, above all, its real value to the city. It 
has a history, too, that is not uninteresting, for it is 
the history of the international struggle for western 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

America. It is the only one of the great lakes lying 
entirely within the territory of the United States. 
And on its shores martyrs have died for their faith, 
soldiers of three great nations have died for their flag, 
and from one end of it to the other, deep buried in its 
shifting bottom sands, lie numberless victims of its 
fury. 

There is a fascination in the infinite variety of 
changes that come upon the ocean, but here are changes 
as great and much more sudden, for every surface 
phenomenon that the ocean presents, Lake Michigan 
presents as well. It has its tides, waterspouts, fogs, 
moments of peace and moments of passion, thunder- 
storms, mirages and whitecaps. And, furthermore, it 
shows strange vagaries of wind and tempest that the 
ocean does not. The salt sea is a fair fighter always, 
and the mariner meets its wrath as an open enemy and 
asks no quarter. But this great inland lake of ours 
lulls him into security with its peaceful beauty and 
then destroys him in a moment with its treacherous 
himiors of devastation and death. 

The lake dons her various garments both bright 
and somber, without much waste of time. A Glouces- 
ter sailor man will often "feel a storm in his bones" 
for two days before it comes, and he knows by an exact 
weather lore handed down to him through many gen- 
erations just about where it will come from and what 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

kind of a blow it will be, and often gets very close to 
guessing its duration. But if he were put down on the 
shores of Lake Michigan and a magic voice were to 
command him, "Prophet, prophesy," he would never 
trust the shape of a cloud or the warning of his bones 
again. 

Let us take a day in the summer, typical of many 
days along the shores of the lake. All afternoon hun- 
dreds of children race up and down the miniature 
beach beside the sanitarium at Lincoln Park, their 
screams of happiness entirely drowning out the splash 
of the baby waves that run across the sand in funny 
little imitation breakers. Right down on the edge of 
the water a peanut and popcorn vender is doing a rush- 
ing business, while mothers and nursemaids fringe the 
upper rise of the beach and watch that their charges 
come to no harm. 

The lake is beautiful, with that dreamy, swaying, 
living beauty that only a waterscape possesses. Off 
on the horizon is a thin haze, blending the sky and the 
water line into a bluish gray. There is not a cloud to 
mar the picture, and as the afternoon comes to a close, 
the passing of the sun seems to make every moment 
even more enjoyable. The romping children are 
seized, after much trouble and coaxing, and when 
stockings and shoes have been pulled on they gradually 
begin to desert the beach. 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

It is getting cooler now. A perceptible breeze 
starts up from the South and the haze out on the hori- 
zon is a little thicker, but the twenty beautiful shades 
in the sky, — shades of yellow and pink, purple, amber, 
red and all the rest, — are still there unchanged, and the 
wind only serves to tumble the surface of the water a 
very little. 

Even before the sun has disappeared the moon, 
nearly at the full, comes into plain view, and we know 
that the night is going to be beautiful. Many thou- 
sands of others think so, too, and prepare for an evening 
in one of the parks or somewhere along the stretch of 
lake front that runs in perfect crescent shape from 
South Chicago far out to the north. 

The moon is no longer gray, but silver. Her 
luster is a little dimmed though. Some tantalizing 
spirit seems to be throwing great strands of fluffy veil- 
ing between her and the earth and soon these strands 
begin to travel with marvelous rapidity and come so 
close that they sweep the tops of the downtown build- 
ings. Half an hour more and many of the intending 
pleasure-seekers look up into the sky and decide not 
to go out tonight. The thin fabric has become a thick 
mist and the wind begins to whistle round the comers 
of the streets. 

There are no clouds in sight, whatever there may 
be above the mist, and the open air pleasure places are 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

being well patronized, notwithstanding the timid with- 
drawals. Nor are many of these people inconven- 
ienced by the wind. They have a dim idea that some 
atmospheric changes are going on — that somewhere it 
is probably storming. But they are content to know 
that what threatened to be a bad night for their fun 
has turned out well enough. In the city the throngs 
rest in safety, only inconvenienced by a stray gust 
that carries away a hat or turns an umbrella. 

But out here on the lake the loosened elements 
have a great pliable slate on which to write their plea- 
sure, and their cruel pleasure tonight is a bitter tragedy. 
A little schooner running, tanbark laden, back home 
from one of the lower ports, moves heavily along, 
reaching a long easy tack into an edge of the south 
wind to get a slant for Chicago harbor. Seven miles 
on her beam she makes out the revolving light at the 
mouth of the river. 

It is eight o'clock and Saturday night. In three 
hours at the latest she will be safe inside. Her skipper 
and crew of nine sturdy hands have been away from 
home two weeks. Three of them are roustabout dock 
floaters, without any ties of family to care about, but 
all the rest are already conjuring up visions of a few 
days with their wives and children round them. 

Here are men who have spent years of their lives 
on the lake, and observant, as seamen generally are, 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

of weather signs and nature's danger signals. And yet, 
if a voice were to whisper that danger was upon them, 
they would take a look at the loose flying scud above 
and laugh. 

Suddenly a squall, not a heavy one, hits the little 
vessel aft. Another, and another, and another come 
in quick succession, and the man at the wheel with an 
oath calls for help to keep her out of the trough of the 
sea. Nobody knows what has happened, but the breeze 
that was due south a moment ago, has developed into 
a blinding gale and it is coming not from the south at 
all, but from the north and west, — and from both ways 
at once. 

A great compact mass of tanbark roped on deck 
amidships gives way under the strain and one poor 
fellow, running across it at the moment, is thrown with 
it into the sea. His shriek is echoed by an answering 
cry from his mates, but they are powerless to save him 
and they know that, even as they think of it, he is al- 
ready pounded mercilessly to his death. They are all 
too close to the same fate now to dwell longer on 
thoughts of him. The waves have the schooner's port 
side at their mercy, for the dropping of her starboard 
cargo has listed her and thrown her awash. 

There is no welcoming red and yellow flash on her 
beam now. Everything ahead and about her is black. 
The main sheet, torn clear from its controlling pulleys, 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

is flapping and tearing in the gale and its boom stands 
out lengthwise with the deck, hopelessly jammed into 
the deckhouse. 

Thud, thud, thud; she pounds into the cruel tem- 
pest, smashing, splitting, giving with every fresh blow. 
The captain and four of his men are stretched full 
length on whatever they can find. The others were 
forward a few moments ago, but there is no sound from 
there now. 

The storm is merciless and the wind shifts with the 
passing minutes. With each crash the vessel is 
thrown deeper and deeper into the waves until she lies 
like a log at the mercy of every blast and every sea. 
The boat swung aft has gone, smashed away from its 
davits, and now floats bottom up with a hole through 
its side. The schooner's sails have become strips of 
whipcord, her jib swept clean and its boom smashed to 
splinters. A flying spar crashes down from above and 
pins one of the sailors to the deck, killing him instantly 
before the eyes of his mates, who hang on in despair. 

The vessel drifts and plunges madly, with the 
water sweeping her from end to end — drifts in the black 
night, but in what direction none of the survivors can 
tell. Half blinded and choked by the flood of the 
waves, they lie stretched there and know that a mo- 
ment's carelessness, the loosening of a hand grasp, will 
send them down to death. 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

The hours — ^two, three, four — go by with the gale 
still pounding above and all about them. Then, as if 
loth to release its victims, the wind gradually abates, 
though the waves are running as high as ever. It is 
two o'clock. Like magic the black clouds fly and part 
above, and the moon in all her beauty again appears. 
By her light the survivors can dimly see one another, 
the great army of whitecaps surging all about them and 
the hull of their schooner stretching out beyond. 

Still they do not move, for the little vessel is being 
thrown up and down like a cork, with the wild seas 
pounding into her amidships. As the daylight comes 
on and they turn their eyes to the place where their 
comrade was struck down, they see with relief that 
both the body and the fallen spar have been washed 
away. As if the coming of day had been a signal for 
the withdrawing of the storm forces, the sea calms 
off rapidly. The same glorious streaks of color 
that we watched in the sky at sunset again glow over 
the surface of the lake, and, as then, they shine above a 
scene of tranquility and beauty. The sun peeps up and 
his beams fall on a peaceful sheet of water, its breast 
only disturbed by a gentle swell that nowhere breaks 
into an uneven ripple. A cloudless sky, a light, balmy 
air, and blue reflecting back the blue. 

Nothing to tell of the terrible conflict of the night, 
save forty miles up the lake, like a dumb animal 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

wounded to death, the hulk of a sinking schooner with 
four despairing, exhausted creatures staggering about 
her remaining planks and six poor storm-racked bodies 
in their last sleep beneath the sparkling waters. 

A tug running down the coast takes the survivors 
to shore, and with them the news that will bring hope- 
lessness and desolation into the homes of the dead. 

And that same afternoon a little pink-toed baby 
girl paddling on the beach at Lincoln Park eagerly 
clutches a bit of new made drift that floats up inshore 
under her hand and cries to her mother: 

"See! Look! The fairies sended me a boat." 



Lake Michigan spreads death-victories similar to 
these alike over summer and winter months, though it 
is in the late fall, just before the close of navigation 
that the most pitiful disasters generally come. Since 
the earliest days of settlement on the lake, one tragedy 
of the storm has succeeded another. Storm waves 
have often measured eighteen feet in height, and in- 
variably when this happens they are very short and 
extraordinarily choppy in character. The distressed 
mAriner on Lake Michigan always has a lee shore close 
by. 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

The vagaries of the wind on the lake at all times, 
both in calm and in storm, are inexplicable. It is no 
uncommon thing to see two yachts within a mile and 
a half of each other running before the wind in oppo- 
site directions, and in bright weather one can often note 
the smoke from three different steamers blowing to 
different points of the compass at the same time. A 
still stranger trick of the wind is apparent in the ex- 
perience of sailing vessels going across the lake to 
various points in Michigan. Many skippers of these 
craft have made the trip with the sea like glass and an 
apparent dead calm, with the lower sails all flapping 
idly, but with topsails filled out with a spanking breeze. 

One of the most disastrous of the early wrecks on 
Lake Michigan was the destruction of the propeller 
Phoenix, a vessel of 350 tons, which went down fifteen 
miles north of Sheboygan, with a loss of 190 out of 195 
lives. Of these, 160 passengers were Holland immi- 
grants, and all perished miserably, those who were not 
drowned being burnt to death in a fire that consumed 
the dismantled hull of the vessel. The greatest of all 
the lake disasters was, of course, the loss of the Lady 
Elgin off Winnetka on September 8, 1880, when a 
collision with the schooner Augusta sent over 300 pas- 
sengers to their destruction. The Lady Elgin sank 
entirely out of sight within twenty minutes from the 
time she was struck. This disaster, while not the 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

direct result of storm, was brought about by reason of 
a high wind that made the Augusta unmanageable. 

On October 16, 1880, the steamer Alpena, running 
from Grand Haven to Chicago, was wrecked with all on 
board, and in the same great storm, ninety other vessels 
either went down or were driven ashore and 118 lives 
were lost during the night. On October 28, 1892, a 
new steel steamer, the W. H. Gilcher, with a crew of 
sixteen hands and 3,000 tons of coal, disappeared when 
within three hours of Chicago and was never heard of 
again. 

On April 7, 1893, on a beautiful afternoon, without 
warning, a fearful storm struck the lake from one end 
to the other, Chicago being in the center of its track. 
A great many South Siders will long remember this 
eventful day, for dozens of vessels were driven inshore 
and against the breakwater and smashed to pieces in 
the presence of thousands who lined the shore. The 
water rose four feet in a series of heavy waves, and kept 
at this level for several hours, a phenomenon never 
before noticed on Lake Michigan. The effect of this 
storm and rise in water was severely felt at St. Joe, the 
tide sweeping 700 feet up beyond the highest known 
high water mark. 

On May 18, 1894, the schooner M. J. Cummings 
went down in a storm off Milwaukee in eighteen feet 
of water, and six of the hands were drowned in sight of 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

the life-saving crew. On January 21 of the following 
year occurred the terrible midwinter storm that sent 
the steamer Chicora to the bottom with its crew of 
twenty-three men. 

The efforts to protect life and shipping on the lake 
have always been extraordinarily complete. Lake 
Michigan now has thirty-four life-saving stations, and 
its shores are lighted by thirty-eight large lighthouses. 
The work of the life-saving stations has been very suc- 
cessful and the labors of the men attached to this de- 
partment in the government service have at all times 
been coupled with the greatest heroism. In fact, any 
story purporting to give a history, brief or otherwise, of 
Lake Michigan's disasters that did not contain some 
particular reference to this heroism would be entirely 
incomplete. 



Lake Michigan in summer, though its beauty is 
broken by occasional storms, is a picture to be turned 
to with relief after pondering on the long series of dis- 
asters associated with its history. As soon as the 
bracing coolness of early Spring is out of the air, there 
is bustle in all the bath-houses and little bathing 
beaches found here and there along the Chicago shore, 
and small boys begin their annual pilgrimage, amid 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

warnings and threats from home, in order to enjoy 
what to many of them becomes the annual wash. 
Little steamboats start to ply from Lincoln Park to the 
downtown bridges, and many moonlight excursions — 
"twenty-five cents the round trip" — ^begin from these 
same bridges, though they are just as liable to end in 
Milwaukee as anywhere else. 

Along the shores of the lake, patches of forest 
begin to show their beautiful green, and trailing 
creepers hang from bluffs in almost tropical profusion. 
Here and there, particularly on the eastern side, great 
peach orchards run right down to the shore of the lake, 
and dozens of romantic bays are crowned by smiling 
farms. 

To many thousands of tired mothers and street- 
weary children the chief glory of Lake Michigan will 
always remain its "across the lake" excursions, when, 
loaded down with lunch baskets, sacks of fruit and 
crockery of every conceivable kind, whole families 
march off to the docks and start out down the river for 
the unknown land of Michigan. 

In order to fully appreciate the joy that follows, 
when the beautiful expanse of blue water spreads itself 
before them for the first time, you must go and join 
one of these excursion parties and take in all the fun 
for yourself. To these people the lake is a source of 
never-ending delight; a common coal barge passing by 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

is a merry fellow traveler. Every buoy is hailed with 
interest, while, between the desire to get a look at the 
white waters thrown up by the cleaving bow of the 
boat, the great stretch of sea on both sides of them, and 
the rapidly blurring and disappearing sky-scrapers, 
mothers, fathers and children alike nearly lose their 
heads. 

The approach to the Michigan side gives the ex- 
cursionists more beauties and strange sights to become 
enthusiastic about. And if they have been wise and 
have chosen a full moon period for their outing, their 
trip back home in the evening will also give them a 
fund of happy memories. 

The movement of the water is almost impercept- 
ible to those on board, and as the vessel glides along, a 
wonderful phosphorescent glow — one more ocean 
phenomenon that is duplicated by the lake — ap- 
pears in her track, and lasts till it is swallowed up in 
the moonlight that floods the steamer and the water 
alike. Out in the distance, black hulls, with their two 
signal lights dimly gleaming, pass from time to time 
and whistle a discordant signal. 

Two hours from the Michigan shore brings you to 
the center of the lake, and here, away from all land 
reminders, imagination can transport one to any water 
picture the fancy conjures up. Even the Mediterranean, 
with its balmv breath, is no more beautiful or more 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

balmy than this. And we may lounge on the deck and 
dream on until brought back to a sense of our surround- 
ings by the great light of the South Chicago steel fur- 
naces in the sky, and by a gradually appearing neck- 
lace of electrical illumination that rapidly begins to 
map out the Chicago shore with great distinctness. 

A few minutes more and hundreds of our ex- 
cursionists give a simultaneous shout as the flashing 
red light at the river mouth — the same light that bade 
our poor lads of the schooner a w^elcome — comes into 
view. With the knowledge of gaping, tired babies 
all around them, mothers begin eagerly to pack up 
baskets, though they are still a good hour from -the 
shore. 

The moon rises higher and higher, and the higher 
it gets in the heavens the more enchanting its track in 
the water seems to be. One by one the city lights 
come out of the darkness, until people begin to point 
out eagerly to one another the various streets as they 
are outlined by the lamps. Then, with a grinding and 
a churning we slow up as we reach the mouth of the 
river, and with a great boom of blustering whistles, as 
if wanting to impress the importance of its arrival on 
every soul in town, the steamer makes its way back out 
of the lake and up to its dock. 

As for Lake Michigan itself, the moon mounts 
to its zenith and sinks again, carrying its beautiful 



LAKE MICHIGAN IN CALM AND STORM 

reflection up to the last moment and then plunging the 
great expanse of water into blackness. 

But not for long. Soon, up out of the eastern sky, 
strange pale lights start to flicker and grow. The 
pinks and blues and golden colors follow each other 
rapidly and again the sun rises to begin another day, 
with the lake lying peacefully below as if no storm had 
ever swept its depth, or buried in its bosom the cruelly 
shattered playthings of its agony. 




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